Tiger Woods’s press conference was truly an “apology heard ’round the world.” But let’s look at how poor use of nonverbal communication brought this high-flying public relations appearance down in flames.

Apparently, I’m not alone in being mystified by the Tiger Woods of late. The day after Woods spoke to an international audience of millions, the Dalai Lama was asked his opinion about Woods’s dilemma. He replied that Tiger’s Buddhist faith would help him find the discipline he needs to avoid further adulterous affairs. Then the Tibetan leader told the Associated Press that, in fact, he had never heard of Tiger Woods before that day.

After viewing Woods’s performance, we may legitimately feel that we don’t know him either. However tightly scripted and finely calibrated this mea culpa was, it was doomed to fail, due to the misuse of two key nonverbal components of crisis communication. I discuss both below.

The Visual Environment

What heartfelt confession requires a manuscript to express it? None. If, as many have said, the eyes are the window of the soul, then the voice is a direct channel to the heart. Along with the sound of truth, we believe a person who looks sincere when they express the depth of their feelings. What we show visually — including body language — is critical here. If we have to read a script to tell someone we’re sorry, our performance becomes a different kind of sorry spectacle altogether.

Visuals and vocal clues constitute the two streams of nonverbal communication that audiences respond to in ways that transcend language. Vocal does not mean “verbal,” in the sense of content. It refers to how something is expressed: the quality of the voice, and all the subtle clues that reveal honesty or the lack thereof.

For oral communication to be authoritative, vocal expression and visual input must work in synergy: the sum is greater than the parts. If we want to express remorse and self-examination, for instance, we can only do so by looking our listeners in the eyes and revealing our feelings through our voice and facial expressions. Instead, Tiger Woods offered his listeners a manuscript, flat vocal delivery, and no facial involvement at all. In the theater, this is known as “phoning in your performance.” And it always results in a wrong number.

Vocal Expressiveness

Tiger Woods — or his handlers — tried to pull off an impossible public speaking task: aiming for spontaneity while delivering premeditation. Rarely will a script sound like anything except the opposite of organic conversation — it’s the reason most telemarketing sounds contrived, stilted, and controlling. And no wonder: medical imaging tests have revealed that different parts of the brain are involved in reading and speaking.

When a speaker works from a script, he or she is setting up the most boring scenario imaginable: a human being reading in the presence of others. Unless those listeners are two- or three-year-olds eager for a bedtime story, the result is an audience that remains cold and unengaged.

Given his reading assignment, Mr. Woods’s cadences, as we would expect, were heavy and flat. Few speakers can work from a script while achieving a natural flow and rhythm. Instead, we get phrases plucked from the page and delivered individually, without the full sense of the idea or emotion that, together, the phrases add up to. After all, as a speaker our own eyes can only grab so much of a sentence. And that’s exactly what the audience gets: a length of twine strung with bits and pieces, rather than intelligent discourse that hangs together and shines like a string of pearls.

Only twice did this speaker’s voice come alive in a long 14 minutes: when Tiger discussed the stories of domestic violence occurring on Thanksgiving night or otherwise, and his anger at the media for hounding his family. In these passages (what else could we call them?), his voice awakened. The language and the delivery flowed. Now he was telling a story he clearly believed in, and the narrative seemed to reach our hearts and elicit our sympathy.

Guts? — Some, but Not Enough

Does it seem that appearing before millions to discuss one’s personal failings — truly baring one’s soul — is a brave act? Indeed it would be, if that is what we had seen at 11:00 a.m. on February 19. It wasn’t.

With a blue TV-studio or political-style curtain backing him, Mr. Woods stood at a lectern and delivered a lecture. Much worse, he took no questions, and the audience was a painfully nicely chosen one of family members, employees, and friends. When the camera left Tiger and focused on his audience, we saw what looked like a congregation of mannequins, stolid but lifeless in the face of this over-scripted sermon.

How it Can Be Done

Mr. Woods, if I may, I’d like to offer some suggestions on how you could have reached our hearts, and gained our sympathy and trust for the future. Imagine this:

You walk into a room where a stool is placed before a small group of friends, supporters, colleagues, and members of the press. You’re wearing a lapel microphone. You greet your audience somberly but with warmth, sit on the stool, and begin talking. And that’s what you do for the next 14 minutes: you tell us how you’ve let down the people who cared about you, and how you’re now trying to turn your life around.

No political-looking backdrop.

No lectern.

No manuscript. Not even any notes.

Then you take questions from the media, and you answer those questions forthrightly and truthfully, as painful as that may be for you. Now you’re a person speaking from the heart, and you sound like it. We listen. And if you do it honestly, we believe you.

Then, perhaps, we can believe in you again.